Sir, – We read with joy the news of Gino Bartali’s posthumous recognition as Righteous Among the Gentiles (“Italian sports hero posthumously honored as Righteous Gentile,” News, September 24).

Bartali epitomized the lofty values of the rescuers and the spirit of solidarity which was so typical of the Italian people.

The International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation started promoting Bartali’s heroic figure many years ago, paying tribute to his brave heart and incorporating his legacy in our worldwide educational programs.

A few weeks ago, on a visit to the Vatican, we met with Pope Francis, who in his “former life” as Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio joined our foundation as honorary member. Quite coincidentally, we told the pontiff our feelings towards the Italian rescuers in general and Gino Bartali in particular.

Pope Francis’s sensitivity to the rescuers is well known to us. As archbishop of Buenos Aires, Cardinal Bergoglio helped us enormously in promoting the Memorial Mural we installed at the Metropolitan Capital in a joint initiative with his predecessor, Cardinal Antonio Quarracino, who also asked to be buried next to it and to allow the Jews to visit this emblematic monument with their heads covered.

This Mural is in tribute to the victims of the Shoa and the terrorist attacks perpetrated against the Israeli embassy and the Jewish community center in Buenos Aires back in the 1990s.

E. EURNEKIAN & B.TENEMBAUM
The International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation New York, New York

]]>http://www.raoulwallenberg.net/saviors/italian/due-credit/feed/0Monsignor Beniamino Schivo, saviorhttp://www.raoulwallenberg.net/saviors/others/monsignor-beniamino-schivo/
http://www.raoulwallenberg.net/saviors/others/monsignor-beniamino-schivo/#commentsSun, 24 Apr 2005 00:00:00 +0000adminhttp://www.raoulwallenberg.net/?p=2329With the courageous efforts of heroes such as Father Beniamino Schivo, the rector of a seminary in Citta di Castello, 85% of Italy’s 45,000 Jews were saved from the Nazis during World War II. The following is the story of one of those families.

There are reasons to explain a relatively high rescue rate of Jews in Italy during WWII. Mostly it was the hatred the Italians had for the Germans that reduced the number of Jews killed.

Support came from the clergy, citizens, authorities, officials, and false identity cards which made the escape from Italy possible for Jews. But this effort didn’t come about without great risks to the people themselves and to their families.

Born in Breslau, Germany, Ursula Korn and her mother fled Germany in 1935 to the Italian Riviera after Nazis seized power. They joined her aunt and uncle In Alassio, Italy, while her father stayed behind to manage his business.

Paul Korn lost his business to ”Aryanization” and eventually joined his family in Italy after much hardship. When Mussolini’s Italy entered the war, in 1940, Fascist Italy aligned with Nazi Germany. Soon after its alliance with Germany, Italy passed a law stripping Italian citizenship from Jews naturalized after 1919.

Ursula’s father and uncle were sent to a camp in Salerno, while Ursula, her mother and her aunt went to Collazone and were transferred in 1941 to Citti di Castello. There they met a priest who suggested they contact Father Beniamino Schivo, rector of the seminary.

”From that moment on, Father Schivo became our protector, our best friend,” Ursula said, ”in every way, endangering his own life, he saved ours lives.” He made life bearable, despite restrictions on the Jews.

Beniamino Schivo provided shelter, clothing, and food for the family, and arranged for Ursula to continue her education at a convent. ‘The nuns loved me,” Ursula recalled, ”my teacher introduced me to her family in Naples, they became my second family.”

With the German occupation of the region, in 1943, the situation changed drastically. Their lives were in danger, ”so Father Schivo took off his habit and with another priest led us past German patrols to a summer villa,” Ursula said.

The priests broke down the door and helped them prepare their hiding place. The Korns hid in the dark, slept on the bare floor. Schivo even arranged for a caretaker to bring the Korns soup every night.

On Christmas Eve 1943 Beniamino traveled nine hours through war torn Italy, to bring food and comfort, and spent the night with them in their tiny cubicle next to the oven where the nuns baked their bread.

Too close to the German line of defense, the villa became too dangerous for the Korns to live. Ursula and Johanna hid in the woods, where they met a group of partisans.

Vatican Radio broadcast a papal injunction: ‘He who makes distinction between Jews and other men is unfaithful to God and is in conflict with God’s commands.’ The Pope ordered religious houses be opened to fleeing Jews.

Priests provided them with false identification papers, with the help of the Swiss, Hungarian, Romanian, and the French Embassies in Rome, and Italian police officials, many of who suffered tortures and beatings and terms in prison, for their noble deeds.

In 1943 Mussolini was overthrown, and 20 years of Fascism came to an end. The Italian government informed the Allies on Sept 1st that it had accepted an armistice.

During this time, the village was under intense bombardment from Allied forces, so Ursula and her family sought sanctuary at the Convent of the Sacred Heart. Schivo brought them to his seminary, which had been converted into a hospital. Finally, in 1944, the British liberated the town.

When the Germans searched the convents, Father Schivo hid Johanna and Ursula in his seminary, even though he was wanted by the Germans and would have been shot immediately if they had been found.

Busy as he was with the many wounded, Father Schivo visited the women every night. When the Allies took over his partisan unit, Paul Korn rejoined his wife and daughter. Ursula remained in Citta de Castello until 1950 when she and her parents immigrated to the U.S.

Ursula kept in contact with her rescuer and in the 1980s nominated him for recognition as one of the Righteous among the Nations. Beniamino received his award from Yad Vashem in 1986.

Ursula said of Schivo: ”I’ve never met a more wonderful, compassionate, or courageous man in my life, in his humility he doesn’t feel he did anything special by saving us, he says it’s his duty to help those who’re suffering.”

”My friendship with Monsignor Schivo will last as long as I live.”

By the end of 2001, 295 Italians, including whole families, were recognized as Righteous among the Nations at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem.

]]>http://www.raoulwallenberg.net/saviors/others/monsignor-beniamino-schivo/feed/0Carlo Angela, a ”Righteous Gentile”http://www.raoulwallenberg.net/saviors/italian/carlo-angela-quot-righteous/
http://www.raoulwallenberg.net/saviors/italian/carlo-angela-quot-righteous/#commentsWed, 01 Jan 2003 00:00:00 +0000adminhttp://www.raoulwallenberg.net/?p=3835”There are three essential conditions that need to be fulfilled in order to be recognized as ‘Righteous Gentile’: having saved Jews, having put yourself into a precariously dangerous situation in order to save Jewish lives, having done it without any calculated self serving gains.”

This is the incipit of the tribute to Carlo Angela, written and read by Franco Brunetta during the first official ceremony that was held in his honor on June 3, 2000 in San Maurizio Canavese, a little town in northern Italy, where he lived most of his life and accomplished most of his great exploits.

Carlo Angela was born in Olcenengo, Italy on January 9, 1875. He studied medicine at the University of Turin, where he graduated in 1899. Subsequently, he went to Congo, Africa, where he practiced among the Belgian army’s suite and then came back to Europe. In Paris he specialized in neuropsychology by attending Babinski’s classes, a great professor famous for having worked with Sigmund Freud.

During the postwar period he decided to participate in Italy’s political life and became a member of ”Democrazia Sociale” (socialist party founded in 1921), but even if the party seemed to be progressive, it showed many nationalist and authoritative positions. This led the party to support Mussolini’s Fascists movement. That is why in 1924 Angela decided to keep distance from the party and, together with other members, he joined the more reformist socialist party of Ivanoe Bonomi.

It is only a few months later that Angela publicly sides against Mussolini by writing an article on the newspaper ”Tempi Nuovi,” blaming Fascism of the murder of the socialist Giacomo Matteotti on June 10, 1924. It did not take long for Fascists to react: on the night of June 21 they broke into the Newspaper’s editorial office, ransacking and setting it on fire, while Carlo Angela was forced to move to San Maurizio Canavese, where he started working as a manager of Villa Turina Amione, a psychiatric facility for mental illness.

It is right in this hospital that Angela started his glorious masterpiece of human solidarity and civil resistance, rescuing many people from the deportation to concentration camps. The professor, together with only a few reliable companions, rescued in Villa Turina Amione numerous antifascists, draft dodger’s and, above all, many Jews. He forced wrong diagnosis and doctored clinical records, turned Hebrews into Aryans and healthy people into mental patients. Among the ones he rescued we find the lawyer Massimo Ottolenghi, together with his son and wife; the Fitz family; captain Dogliotti; Lord Revelli of Beaumont and Renzo and Nella Segre.

Thanks to one of them, Angela’s incredible exploits have been revealed years later. In 1996 the Italian publisher Sellerio presented ”Venti Mesi” (Tewnty Months), a journal written by Renzo Segre, an Italian Jew who avoided Nazi deportation thanks to the professor’s help. He and his wife pretended to be mentally ill and hid for one and a half years at Villa Turina Amione. He is one of the few men who can give testimony of Italian prosecution and, above all, an important witness of Angelo’s remarkable deeds.

In his book, Segre describes the professor as an incredibly charismatic character, who despite the fact of having a family of his own, saved him and many other people, putting his life in danger without ever asking for anything in return.

Renzo Segre’s daughter, Anna, published the diary twenty years after his disappearance, and it was on the day of its presentation that the historian Franco Brunetta, started a long but fascinating research on Angela’s life. He looked through many documents, private and public archives, interviewed and listened to the memoirs of other survivors that had been saved by the professor.

After four years of hard work everything was ready for the first official ceremony on June 3, 2000. Two years later his name would be written on the stones of the Righteous Gentiles at the Holocaust Museums in Jerusalem.

At first sight it might seem incomprehensible that the figure of Carlo Angela has remained unrevealed for such a long time after his disappearance, but this is only due to the extraordinary discretion that has always characterized him. Thank his prudence and tenacity he was able to rescue so many lives and shape his path among the ”Righteous Gentiles”.

REFERENCE

]]>http://www.raoulwallenberg.net/saviors/italian/list-italian-saviors/feed/0Ezio Giorgettihttp://www.raoulwallenberg.net/saviors/italian/ezio-giorgetti/
http://www.raoulwallenberg.net/saviors/italian/ezio-giorgetti/#commentsWed, 01 Jan 2003 00:00:00 +0000adminhttp://www.raoulwallenberg.net/?p=3842Mr. Ezio Giorgetti, a hotel owner on the Adriatic Coast, was responsible for the rescue of forty Jewish refugees in the aftermath of Italy’s armistice with the Allies.

On September 1943, a few days after the armistice, a group of forty Yugoslav Jews from the city of Asolo (Treviso), arrived in the town of Bellaria, near Rimini, and asked Mr. Giorgetti for help in finding a suitable place to hide. Mr. Giorgetti decided to reopen his Hotel Savoia despite it being the end of the summer season and whilst asking for a small fee for the accommodation, he promised to host them until the liberation, at great personal risk.

When the Germans occupied the area and began to search around Bellaria, forcing all of the civilians out, Mr. Giorgetti decided to take the situation into his own hands and moved the Jewish group repeatedly to elude the Gestapo. First, he housed them in a smaller hotel on the Adriatic. Then, the 40 Jews were moved to an empty farmhouse, which Ezio had furnished himself by taking some of the furniture from his own hotel. Later, when this place also proved risky, Mr. Giorgetti moved the refugees to another hotel, the ”Pensione Italia’, after persuading the owner to hide them in his rooms. ”The moment we arrived at the Pension Italia, our financial relationship with Mr. Ezio Giorgetti came to an end… Previously we might have thought that his actions had been motivated by an interest in prolonging the hotel season. But a close bond had formed between him and us through all our daily contacts, and for Mr. Ezio Giorgetti our destiny and his now somehow became linked,” explains Josef Konforti, one of the refugee group’s leaders.

Despite pressure from his parents to let the group go, Ezio’s main concern became that of ensuring the survival of the 40 refugees and he was willing to take any risk necessary and to pay for anything they needed in order to achieve this. ”He did not falter for even a moment,” writes Konforti. ”He kept on advising and helping us, putting us in touch with the clergy, with the anti-fascist elements, with the authorities in neighboring San Marino, and bringing medical help whenever required.”

When the Gestapo occupied the Pension Italia, Ezio contacted some locals in the villages around the mountains near San Marino and managed to smuggle the group out of the hotel and into friendly villagers’ houses until the Liberation. During that time, despite risking his life, Ezio visited the refugees on a regular basis, bringing food and emotional support to all of them.

Dr. Neumann, one of the refugees who survived thanks to Ezio’s generosity and civic courage does not understate the magnitude of Ezio’s material and psychological support:

”I am telling the unvarnished truth when I say that Ezio’s help, personal sacrifice and devotion saved the whole group, including my family and parents, from death at the hands of the Nazis.”

Bibliography

]]>http://www.raoulwallenberg.net/saviors/italian/ezio-giorgetti/feed/0Father Giulio Gradassihttp://www.raoulwallenberg.net/saviors/italian/father-giulio-gradassi/
http://www.raoulwallenberg.net/saviors/italian/father-giulio-gradassi/#commentsWed, 01 Jan 2003 00:00:00 +0000adminhttp://www.raoulwallenberg.net/?p=3844Dr. Rubin Pick together with his wife and daughter escaped from Poland and took refuge in Trieste until September 1943. When the German occupation affected this area they decided to move south into the liberated part of Italy, but on their way they were forced to stop in Florence as their journey was becoming increasingly risky.

They managed to find refuge at the Church of Santa Felicia, but as the Gestapo began searching around the city the local priest who was sheltering them became uneasy. A fellow priest, Don Giulio Gradassi, feeling compassion not only for the Jewish family but for his fearful colleague, decided to take responsibility for the refugees and took the Picks with him to his town of Castelione. He hosted Dr. Rubin in his own church and with the assistance of some nuns of a nearby convent, managed to hide Mrs. Pick and her daughter.

When a German raid surprised the relative tranquillity of the convent in December 1943 and Mrs. Pick and daughter were forced to find another refuge, Father Giulio – despite the freezing winter rain and the bronchitis that seriously affected him- cycled for miles on his bike in search of another safe haven. Despite a high temperature and the parlous state of his health, he succeeded and the women were taken to safety with a nearby family.

A month later, again he biked through the countryside for hours when the hosts were no longer willing to risk their lives for the Jewish family. Eventually Father Giulio found a permanent refuge for the Picks until the Liberation, and their lives were spared together with the many other refuges he had helped save.

Bibliography

]]>http://www.raoulwallenberg.net/saviors/italian/father-giulio-gradassi/feed/0Don Arrigo Beccarihttp://www.raoulwallenberg.net/saviors/italian/don-arrigo-beccari/
http://www.raoulwallenberg.net/saviors/italian/don-arrigo-beccari/#commentsWed, 01 Jan 2003 00:00:00 +0000adminhttp://www.raoulwallenberg.net/?p=3845During Italy’s Fascist period, Don Arrigo Beccari was a young priest at the catholic seminary of Nonantola, a small village near the city of Bologna, in the Emilia Romagna region.

In July 1942, a group of fifty Jewish children escaping from Dalmatia, (at the time occupied by Italian troops) took refuge in Villa Emma near Nonantola with help of Josef Itai, the leader of DELASEM (the Jewish communal welfare agency). The Villa had been hosting another 50 children prior to the group’s arrival from Dalmatia and had been a relatively safe place during the war.

However, with the armistice and the German occupation that followed Italy’s surrender, the hunting down of Jews began. Having heard of the Jewish children’s residence in Villa Emma and knowing the huge risks they were running of falling into Nazi hands, Don Arrigo Beccari decided to take action. Without consulting his superiors in Modena, he took as many children as he could with him in the seminary and found places to stay amongst trusted villagers for the others. The kitchen of the seminary supplied food for all of the young refugees and the goodness and generosity of the priest and his friends provided them with emotional support throughout the German occupation. When the Nazis began to search every Catholic institution and school looking for Jewish refugees and even the village seminary became too dangerous a place to hide, a plan to escape to Switzerland seemed the only option to ensure their survival. With the assistance of his physician Dr. Moreali, Don Arrigo arranged for false Italian documents to be issued for all the Jewish people of the village (now 120) and helped the refugees to successfully board a train for the Swiss border.

A few days later the German police arrested Don Beccari and imprisoned him in Bologna. Despite the torture to which he was subjected to, Don Beccari never revealed to the Gestapo any of the details of the escape, nor of the people who assisted him in the rescue.

In his personal account of the war he remembers the joy that he felt helping others: ”It would be difficult for me to erase the memory of the terror and suffering of those days or of my joy at doing the small good, which was my duty and which had to be done.”

Bibliography

]]>http://www.raoulwallenberg.net/saviors/italian/don-arrigo-beccari/feed/0Don Brondello and the Catholic Churchhttp://www.raoulwallenberg.net/saviors/italian/don-brondello-catholic-church/
http://www.raoulwallenberg.net/saviors/italian/don-brondello-catholic-church/#commentsWed, 01 Jan 2003 00:00:00 +0000adminhttp://www.raoulwallenberg.net/?p=3846The subject of the Vatican’s response to the Fascist persecution of the Jews is complex and much debated. Whilst the Catholic Church has often been criticized for its tacit acceptance of the Nazi deportation of Jews, a clearer picture of Italy’s underground network of saviors – which allowed the majority of the 45,000 Jews residing within the Italian border to be rescued – seems to suggest that the majority of the survivors owed their lives to the Catholic clergy.

Historian Margherita Marchione in her book ”Yours is a Precious Witness” reveals that in a series of interviews with Italian clergy she was repeatedly shown how, contrary to general belief, ”at the request of Pope Pius XII, doors of convents and monasteries were opened to save the Jews when the Nazis occupied Italy” (from Holocaust Heroes). It seems in other words that whilst no official statement was made by the Pope as a reaction to the Nazi Final Solution, an efficient network of individuals ranging from local priests, monks and nuns to partisans and villagers alike, was established underground, working against the clock and under the Pope’s consent to ensure survival for the majority of Jews in Italian territory. Some 155 Catholic institutions, including convents, monasteries and seminaries across Italy each hosted on average 25-30 Jews and offered a safe haven to desperate families and children trying to escape their death sentence.

Mordecai Paldiel, the research Chief of Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust memorial which utilizes rigid benchmarks to assess Holocaust saviors, has no doubt of the importance of the Italian clergy in the rescue of the Jews residing in Italy during WW II: ”There can be little doubt that the rescue of 85 per cent of Italy’s Jews can be safely attributed to the massive support extended to fleeing Jews by the overwhelming majority of the Catholic clergy… as well as from people from all walks of life, even officials and militiamen within the more intensely Fascist regime” (from Holocaust Heroes). The local clergy, the partisans and villagers collaborated in an attempt to counteract the German plans of deportation and the majority of time succeeded in supplying refugees with a safe harbor, clothes, food and most importantly the forged papers necessary to reach the Italian South where freedom had been ensured by the Allies’ invasion and subsequent occupation.

Don Francesco Brondello, a local priest from Borgo San Dalmazzo, a small town in the Italian Alps, is one of such War heroes. Now retired in his late eighties and leading a quiet existence in the nearby village of Fontanelle, Don Francesco still possesses that same energy, compassion and commitment to those who suffer, that led him 60 years ago to risk his life and sacrifice himself for the safety of others. Born in Borgo San Dalmazzo in 1920, he was only 23 when he found himself at the geographical epicenter of Nazi deportation and started a localized resistance with the help of various partisans groups. Courageous, idealistic and an incredibly talented skier, Don Brondello used his knowledge of the surrounding mountains and his ability to master the tortuous paths that linked nearby villages, German military posts, and Partisans secret hideaways, to bring food and other commodities to dozens of Jewish families hidden in the Italian Alps after the armistice with the Allies.

Hundreds of Jews are estimated to have taken refuge in the steep mountains that connect the French border to Italian soil. With the armistice of September 8th, 1943, making Italy no longer allied to the Axis powers, the IV Armada in Southern France collapsed. The Italian army, which had occupied French territory since November 1942, had provided up to that moment, paradoxical as it sounds, a relatively safe existence for the thousand of non- French Jewish who took refuge in Southern France. Fajerstein- Walchirk, one of the refugees who lived under the control of the Italian army explains in an article which appeared in the Chicago Jewish News (Dec 2, 2004), how the Italian occupation had been relatively benign: ”Jews lived in a much more comfortable way. The Italians were not rabid anti-Semites.” ”Jews had to register at the police station”, she continues, but ”otherwise they were treated much more humanely and with greater dignity than elsewhere.”

Consequently, when the Italian army fell apart and soldiers rushed back to Italy, the Jews residing in the French southern areas, fearing that without the somewhat benign influence of the Italians they would be left in the hands of the Nazis, decided to follow the returning Italian soldiers through the Alps into Italian territory. In the days following the armistice, more than 800 Jews crossed the mountains through the Colle delle Finestre and Ciriegia with their families and babies, carrying suitcases and bundles and climbing the steep valleys in their sandals and summer clothes. Along the way, they slept in barracks and convents and after walking interruptedly for 3 long days, they finally reached the Italian towns of Valdieri and Entreacque.

For many of them the dream of escaping persecution did not become a reality. The Nazi troops reached the western Italian region around Cuneo a few days later and some 349 Jewish people, upon the Germans’ threat of execution, reported themselves to the Police and were deported to Auswichez soon after. However, many refused to give themselves up and, with the assistance of courageous priests such as Don Brondello, remained successfully hidden in the caves, which dotted the Italian mountains. Later, they made their way towards the liberated south territories.

During the days following the armistice, Don Brondello looked after hundreds of Jews hidden in the Alpine valleys, bringing winter clothes, shoes, and the little food that he managed to gather from the local peasants, and shared whatever he could with the refugees. ”It was amazing how people risked their lives. They shared their meager things with us when they really didn’t have any food either,” recounts on of the refugees who was saved by Don Brondello. In an interview given in February 2001 Don Brondello remembers the exodus across the Alps as a ”very painful situation for the 800 refugees searching for a roof… they had nothing with them, no warm clothes, or shoes, nothing to eat! It was painful to watch… I was 23 years old and I firmly believed that my role as a priest was to stand besides those who suffer, no matter which religious or ethnic group they belonged to.”

With the help of his good friend Don Ghibaudo Mauro (who was later killed by the Nazis), Don Francesco hid as many refugees as he could in convents and other institutions presided over by nuns, whilst some found hospitality in local houses. After having fed them and provided all necessary supplies, he organized and distributed forged identity papers in collaboration with a partisan organization. With the assistance of Don Viale, he helped entire Jewish families to escape to Switzerland via Milan or to Southern Italy via Genoa.

”In order not to be caught by the German police,” Don Brondello remembers, ”Don Ghibaudo and myself had fabricated a plan: we had decided that all the communication between us with the regards to the Jewish refugees should be in the local Piedmont dialect, written in Greek characters… in this way they would not be able to understand any of our correspondence.”

Despite his astute plan and his incredible agility as a skier, Don Brondello was eventually detained by the German police, tortured and put in prison until the end of the war.

The first time the German police tried to arrest him he was on his way to the nearby French town of S. Martin carrying 78 letters from the prisoners of Borgo San Dalmazzo concentration camp to their families and friends. ”When the Jews crossed from the town of S. Martin Vesubie, some left over there families and friends… I remember 78 letters written by the prisoners who wanted me to take them to St. Martin… I remember there was a Slovenian man who came with me- he said that it was years since he saw his mother last… he had just found out that his mother had gone to work in St. Martin as a maid and wanted to join me in the journey… It was mid November and there was snow everywhere… We spent the night in the woods and the next day the Slovenian decided to go back to the Italian border because he thought the crossing to be too dangerous… However as I later found out he was not going back for that reason… in reality he was a spy for the Germans and his role was to pin point any dangerous individual working for the Resistance… like me… As I climbed into the bus in St. Martin two Gestapo policemen approached me and asked for my passport- there was nowhere to escape… So I stayed in the bus and arrived in Nice at 6 in the evening – […] I began to walk in Central Nice and the police officers were standing right behind me… I said to myself, ‘I have to run away or else I’ll end up in the police office!’… So I began running and they start shooting, but I kept running… I eventually found a church, the church of St. Francois de Paul, and I went in asking for help. A friar opened the loft in the roof of the church and I ran upstairs to hide… I was terrified in that instant… I stayed hidden for a while and then I asked the friar for a bike and went back to Valdieri, near Borgo San Dalmazzo. […] I was so happy that I was back in Valdieri that I couldn’t stop crying for the joy… I kept screaming, ”I managed to run away from the Germans!”

Despite eluding the Germans in Nice, Don Brondello was eventually captured, beaten up and locked up in prison, when a villager from Borgo San Dalmazzo who had joined the ”Black Brigade” (the military wing of the Fascist party instituted in June 1944) betrayed him to the German police. Brondello himself recounts: ”One time a man named Ferraris from the Village, who knew me and belonged to the Black Brigade, asked me to follow him. ”Go and get your hat,” said the man, ”and follow me.” This time I thought to myself I won’t run away… They put me in a van and took me to the Police Station where the head of the Black Brigade, commandant Bellinetti ask me a series of questions: ”Why do you follow the order of Pope Pio XII?… You priests should only have the right to live if instead of teaching Jesus’ life you gave young boys weapons and taught them to shoot, shoot. Shoot!!”… Then somebody else took a hand grenade and put it into my mouth whilst another officer starts asking questions to which I could not answer because I had the bomb in my mouth… ”Answer! Answer or otherwise I shoot you!” he kept yelling… The next day I went through another interrogation… I was tortured, beaten up, for two long hours… I was bleeding everywhere…”

The terrible injuries inflicted by the Gestapo and Black Shirts to the young priest for refusing to divulge the names of his collaborators did not effect his intrinsic goodness and righteousness. His only answer to the police’s questions of why he helped Jews and partisans alike rather than collaborating with the Authorities was: ”I don’t care if one is a partisan or a Jew… When I meet a man who asks for help, as a priest, I must stop, whatever the consequences… instead of asking his name I do what I can to help as if he were my brother.” Sixty one years after the end of the war Don Brondello remembers those terrible events with a hint of humor as if the smile on his face could not be wiped off even by the most painful of personal memories. He still puts sacrifice for those who suffer at the top of his duties and he feels no resentment for the men who tortured him. ”I don’t care what they did to me in prison… I forgive them, I will always forgive them. I only pray for them to understand, so that they will never do again what they have done in the past.”

The story of Don Brondello personifies those rare virtues of selflessness and courage that represent the only lights in the darkness of the Holocaust. But his story is not unique; hundreds of priests, nuns, and monks throughout WWII set such an example of generosity and sacrifice which should not be underestimated. As Paldiel of Yad Vashem emphasizes vis a vis the support of the Italian clergy for Jewish refuges: ”In no other occupied Catholic country were monasteries, convents, shrines, and religious houses opened to the fleeing Jews, and their needs attended to, without any overt intention to steer them away from their ancient faith, solely to abide by the pre-eminent religious command for the sanctity of life. Through this, they epitomized the best and most elevated forms of religious faith and human fidelity.”

]]>http://www.raoulwallenberg.net/saviors/italian/don-brondello-catholic-church/feed/0Perlasca, the great pretenderhttp://www.raoulwallenberg.net/saviors/others/perlasca-great-pretender/
http://www.raoulwallenberg.net/saviors/others/perlasca-great-pretender/#commentsWed, 01 Jan 2003 00:00:00 +0000adminhttp://www.raoulwallenberg.net/?p=5011015The stories of the Holocaust Saviors had two important things in common. They all resisted to get into the terror band, by risking what they were and had. None, in any way, was exempted from the high price that the noblest actions carry in certain periods.

What was really passionate of this stories of solidarity and courage is to find and know the paths that each of these heroes followed and the details of each deed.

Let us take the case of Giorgio Perlasca ( Como , 1910), Spanish “Consul” to Budapest between December 1944 and January 1945.

Loyal to his condition of sympathizer of Gabriele D’ Annnzio’s nationalistic ideas, he offered as a volunteer to fight on Francisco Franco’s side on the Spanish Civil War. At the end of the conflict he came back to Italy where he was caught by the beginning of the Second World War and the alliance between Mussolini and Hitler. That was the moment when Perlasca leaves fascism and decides to stay loyal only to King Victor Emmanuel III . The old resentment towards Germany , country against which Italy had fought during the First World War and 1935 German racial laws set a limit to an exacerbated patriotism. “I was not fascist or anti-fascist; I was anti Nazi”, he would say some time later.

The 1943 autumn surprises him as official delegate of the Italian government with diplomatic status. He had been sent to the Eastern Europe countries with the mission of buying meat for the Italian army. On October 8, the American general Dwight Eisenhower announces the unconditional surrender of Italy to the allied forces. Then, Perlasca makes public his oath to the Italian monarch that costs him his freedom. The Hungarian government, threatened by Germany , takes him as prisoner and confines him in a castle reserved for diplomats. After a few months he took advantage of a medical pass that allowed him to travel within Bulgaria to get away and request political asylum at the Spanish Embassy, the country of his juvenile adventures. Suddenly Giorgio became “Jorge” with the same rights than a Spanish citizen.

At short he started to collaborate with the rescue actions of Jews that carried out Angel Sanz Briz, the consul in charge of the legation, in close collaboration with other diplomatic legations such as Switzerland , Sweden , Portugal and the Vatican .

When Sanz Briz was forced to leave Hungary at the end of 1944 not to recognize the new pro-Nazi government of Ferenc Szalasi, the authorities had the chance to advance over the Spanish houses of protection. Immediately, and to avoid the worst, Perlasca made the Ministry of the Interior believe that Sanz Briz had appointed his successor.

He appointed himself as Spanish Ambassador and on a piece of paper with official letterhead he wrote his designation as representative of Franco’s government. He gave this document to the authorities of the Hungarian State Department and they took it as legal. Immediately after, he put under his custody thousands of refugees hidden in Spanish houses and, like Raoul Wallenberg, he negotiated with the Nazi bloodhounds to lower the greatest amount of people condemned to death in the extermination camps.

… ” The relatives of the Spanish people in Hungary request your presence in Spain . Until communications are reestablished and the journey is possible, you will stay here under the protection of the Spanish government,” said the letters of protection based on a 1924 law by which Spanish citizenship was given to all Sephardi Jews.

With the Red Army in Budapest and the certainty that about 5,200 Jews were safe, Perlasca initiated a long return to Italy .

“Jorge” kept in secret his incredible adventure for more than 30 years, until a group of women of the Jewish community in Hungary started to track the Spanish diplomat who had saved their lives.

Before he died on August 15, 1992 in Padova, where he had gown up, Perlasca gave his valuable testimony to the memory of the nations.

Thanks to the film “Perlasca, an Italian Hero”, and to the books such as the one belonging to the journalist Enrico Deaglio, “La Banalita del Bene. Storia di Giorgio Perlasca”, the world knows today the story of this Holocaust savior.

* Baruch Tenembaum is Founder of The International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation

]]>http://www.raoulwallenberg.net/saviors/others/perlasca-great-pretender/feed/0Holocaust survivor and panelists remember Italian righteoushttp://www.raoulwallenberg.net/saviors/events-75/holocaust-survivor-panelists/
http://www.raoulwallenberg.net/saviors/events-75/holocaust-survivor-panelists/#commentsWed, 01 Jan 2003 00:00:00 +0000adminhttp://www.raoulwallenberg.net/?p=3723Holocaust survivor Walter Wolff earned a standing ovation for the inspirational account he shared at an Oct. 17 symposium on Italians who risked their lives to help persecuted Jews. He praised the Italians who helped him flee Nazi Germany and hid him in their homes, and he exhorted the full auditorium at the Center for Jewish History to combat discrimination the moment it starts. ”The Banality of Good: Rescuers in Italy at the Time of Persecution” also featured a series of brief lectures by four distinguished panelists, as well as opening remarks by Honorable Antonio Bandini, the Consul General of Italy, who said he ”learned more about Italian Jewry in New York than in Italy;” and Senator Seymour Lachman, distinguished professor at Wagner College.

Wolff’s lively address, complete with a Mussolini impersonation and a pantomime of the last song he played before selling his violin for food, allowed the audience to glimpse the world he recorded in his memoir, ”Bad Times, Good People.” It followed presentations by Simon Levis Sullam, a lecturer in the Department of Italian Studies at the University of California, Berkeley; Liliana Picciotto Fargion, a Milanese historian an archivist; Eva Fogelman, author of ”Conscience and Courage: Rescuers of Jews during the Holocaust”; and Vincent Marmorale, from the Holocaust Memorial Committee of the Order of the Sons of Italy. The panelists credited as rescuers both rich and poor, civil service agents and ordinary citizens, religious and not. Among the audience were several Holocaust survivors who spoke of their experience during the question-and-answer session that followed the presentations.

The symposium was organized by the Center for Jewish History, the Consulate General of Italy, Wagner College, and the Centro Primo Levi, in collaboration with the International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation, the Italian Cultural Institute, and the Order of the Sons of Italy.

The International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation is a non-profit organization, with the aim of rendering homage to, promoting the message of, and remembering the actions of all those Heroes of the Holocaust who, like Raoul Wallenberg, risked their lives to save persecuted people.